Reductionism

Reductionism refers to several related but different philosophical positions regarding the connections between phenomena, or theories, "reducing" one to another, usually considered "simpler" or more "basic".The Oxford Companion to Philosophy suggests that it is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three part division:

Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts

Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb the old, but reduces it to more basic terms. Theory reduction itself is divisible into three: translation, derivation and explanation.

In the sciences, application of methodological reductionism attempts explanation of entire systems in terms of their individual, constituent parts and their interactions. Thomas Nagel speaks of psychophysical reductionism (the attempted reduction of psychological phenomena to physics and chemistry), as do others and physico-chemical reductionism (the attempted reduction of biology to physics and chemistry), again as do others. In a very simplified and sometimes contested form, such reductionism is said to imply that a system is nothing but the sum of its parts. However, a more nuanced view is that a system is composed entirely of its parts, but the system will have features that none of the parts have. "The point of mechanistic explanations is usually showing how the higher level features arise from the parts."

Reductionism

Reductionism refers to several related but different philosophical positions regarding the connections between phenomena, or theories, "reducing" one to another, usually considered "simpler" or more "basic".The Oxford Companion to Philosophy suggests that it is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three part division:

Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts

Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb the old, but reduces it to more basic terms. Theory reduction itself is divisible into three: translation, derivation and explanation.

In the sciences, application of methodological reductionism attempts explanation of entire systems in terms of their individual, constituent parts and their interactions. Thomas Nagel speaks of psychophysical reductionism (the attempted reduction of psychological phenomena to physics and chemistry), as do others and physico-chemical reductionism (the attempted reduction of biology to physics and chemistry), again as do others. In a very simplified and sometimes contested form, such reductionism is said to imply that a system is nothing but the sum of its parts. However, a more nuanced view is that a system is composed entirely of its parts, but the system will have features that none of the parts have. "The point of mechanistic explanations is usually showing how the higher level features arise from the parts."

Latest News for: Scientific reductionism

However, the average scientist reads only about 250 papers a year.Meanwhile, the quality of the scientific literature has been in decline ... Although chance has always been a factor in scientific discovery, it is currently playing a much larger role than it should ... And even before scientific discovery can be automated, embracing Bacon’s approach could prove valuable at a time when pure reductionism is reaching the edge of its usefulness....

These objections are propped up by a litany of misconceptions about the scientific method and practice, and often make strawmen of themselves by attacking obsolete scientific philosophies ... Scientism is often ridiculed as an appeal to excessive reductionism that “restricts human inquiry.” This notion is predicated on a view of science as purely reductionist, a charge that betrays a deep misunderstanding of scientific practice....

Henderson wants to re-enchant the world, but not at the expense of scientific explanations of it. The writer Caspar Henderson wants to re-enchant the world, but not at the expense of scientific explanations of it. His lucid, elegant and wide-ranging book A New Map of Wonders does a good job of showing how misplaced our fear of scientificreductionism is....

Their ideas arise from a particular form of scientific thought known as reductionism, which holds that every aspect of our world, no matter how awe-inspiring, is “nothing but” the mechanical motion of particles acting predictably on each other. In fact, recent findings in complexity theory and systems biology point the way to a new conception of a connected universe that is both scientifically rigorous and deeply meaningful....

Anyway, where I want to go in this piece ultimately is some mildly philosophical thoughts on nature and farming, and on holism and reductionism, and the links between these two dualities – thoughts with some upbeat implications for a small farm future ...Maybe what’s going on here is another set of contradictions around another dualistic debate – holism versus reductionism....

Meanwhile, the quality of the scientific literature has been in decline ... Although chance has always been a factor in scientific discovery, it is currently playing a much larger role than it should ... It could even begin another scientific revolution ... And even before scientific discovery can be automated, embracing Bacon’s approach could prove valuable at a time when pure reductionism is reaching the edge of its usefulness....

The second arm to the “science of man” strategy was seen as purely based on scientific rationality ... It concentrated on funding scientific cliques at a relatively small number of elite institutions (such as Caltech and the University of Chicago) ... Almost the whole world nowadays assumes the overwhelming emphasis of biological science on genetics and reductionism to be a logical and inevitable scientific one....

“I suppose it is inevitable that I should think of fiction as a small model of the simulacrum of reality that is given to us by sense and perception and as a way to probe anomalies that emerge in the assumed world when it is under scrutiny.” Scientificreductionism bears much of the brunt of her distrust, but she is also extremely resistant to ......

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is,” Kurt Vonnegut lamented in his terrific lecture on storytelling ... Wilczek writes. ... But between Newton and modernity stood the Romantic era, in which artists rebelled against scientificreductionism and what they perceived to be its assault on complementarity ... William Blake protested against reductionism’s blinkered vision ... ....

Enlightenment, reductionism, and empiricism were highly appealing some 200 years ago, as a reaction to an age when the scientific method was not valued like it is today ... It is through this scientific method that we came to the practice of isolating variables, rationalizing everyday situations, and otherwise, attempting to capture, quantify, and control complexity through reductionism. The Effects of Reductionism....